All Articles Tagged "Hoda kotb"

CapitalNewYork has learned that our fourth hour favorite Hoda Kotb has renewed her contract with Today sticking by Kathie Lee Giffords’ side, wine glass in hand. She’ll also be contributing to other NBC News programs, including Dateline, her old program.

ABC approached Kotb, looking for a new host to take a seat at the table on The View. Jenny McCarthy recently joined that show, but Barbara Walters will be vacating her position come May, when she retires. According to CapitalNY, the offer was “compelling,” but clearly not compelling enough.

While the first three hours of Today has suffered in the ratings, falling in the wake of Ann Curry’s dismissal and GMA’s come up, the fourth hour of the show continues to do well. Kotb has been with NBC since 1997 and was even a candidate to fill Ann Curry’s spot before it went to Savannah Guthrie. On the occasions when Kotb has filled in at the anchor desk, she has gotten rave reviews. So perhaps part of the new contract includes a promise to move from the fourth hour to an earlier time slot?

Either way, congrats Hoda!

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By now we know that cancer doesn’t discriminate by age, race, gender, sexuality, or class. You’d be hard pressed to find a person on this earth who doesn’t know someone who has either survived or succumbed to the disease or been diagnosed with some form themselves, and celebrities are no different. Here are 14 who’ve earned the title of survivor after overcoming a bout with cancer.

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Michael C. Hall

Actor Michael C. Hall has tried his best to live a private life. He secretly wed second wife and “Dexter” co-star Jennifer Carpenter and it took them over a year to make an appearance together as a married couple. Hall further had heads scratching after he accepted a Golden Globe award in 2010 wearing a knit cap until his agent confirmed Hall was undergoing treatment for a treatable form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A few months later it was announced he was fully cured of the disease. In 2011, the “Six Feet Under” star became celebrity spokesperson for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s “Light the Night Walk” fundraising campaign.

The New York Post is reporting that The View is interested in adding Hoda Kotb, co-host of the fourth hour of the Today show with Kathie Lee Gifford, to its diminished roster.

Three of The View‘s hosts — Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who has already left the show for Fox & Friends, Joy Behar, and Barbara Walters herself — are leaving the show over the next year or so.

According to the Post, Kotb would replace Behar and add journalism experience to the panel, something that has been lacking since Meredith Vieira left. “She also adds some diversity to the panel,” the paper quotes a source saying. Which is strange because Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd are on the panel, but OK.

Kotb has hosted Today with Kathie Lee since 2007. And while the hour can become a wine-fueled gaffe machine, it’s entertaining enough to make it a ratings winner for the show, which has fallen from its top spot — to GMA — in the months since Ann Curry was booted from the anchor desk and Savannah Guthrie was added.

“Insiders believe NBC would hustle to keep its Kotb/Gifford partnership intact,” the Post says. Moreover, sources add that Kotb is happy where she is, and another ABC source says the story isn’t true.

If you watched the Today show earlier this week (and the ratings indicate that fewer of you are) then you certainly noticed that Hoda Kotb was sitting in for Savannah Guthrie for a few days, putting her on camera much earlier than her usual fourth hour with Kathy Lee. We caught her a couple of times and thought she did a great job — engaging, funny, relatable, all the things that a morning show host should be. It’s been so long, you almost forget that she started out doing the news completely sober, without a sip of wine in sight. Apparently, we’re not the only ones who were impressed with her work beside Matt Lauer.

The New York Times’ media reporter Brian Stelter saw lots of tweets from people singing Hoda’s praises, many asking that Kotb stick with the job for the long-term. The Huffington Post notes that Kotb’s name had been in the running to replace Ann Curry when she was ousted from the program. However, the article says, Guthrie is in the chair and the network wouldn’t want to go through another major change so quickly.

But, Today has been thirsting for good news. A recent New York magazine feature went into great detail about the meltdown at the show in the wake of Curry’s removal, and the show lost the top spot in the ratings to GMA a few months ago, the first time that happened in 16 years.

HuffPo says the positive feedback will increase Hotb’s standing at the show, which we agree with. We’re, no doubt, going to see her sitting in for Guthrie more often. And who knows. Hoda’s great foil for KLG, but a more serious position could be in her future. The Today show blog has a montage of all the fun she had.

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It may come as no surprise that while we go throughout our day looking for stories on relationships, ratchet entertainment, and crazy news to entertain you with, we find inspiration from morning talk shows like The View and the Today show. This morning, while watching Kathie Lee & Hoda and wondering (yet again) about how these two manage to drink merlot at 10am, one of the editors inquired about Hoda Kotb’s ethnicity. When I noted that she was Egyptian, my co-worker asked “how come Hoda doesn’t identify as a Black woman?”

Well, I didn’t realize that she didn’t identify as a Black woman. Does she really need to publicly exclaim herself to be a Black woman continuously in order to show pride?

Black folks are definitely representing in morning media: we have Robin Roberts, Al Roker, Whoopi Goldberg, Sherri Shepherd, and Michael Strahan to name just a few. Although Hoda doesn’t necessarily come to mind when we think of Blacks in the media, do we need her to make a big to-do about being an African-American woman?

Personally, I don’t feel any type of way about it mainly because Hoda doesn’t seem like she’s trying not to be Black. She’s just herself. To be fair, when does she have the chance to speak out on Black issues on The Today Show? Between segments on makeovers, budget fashion and fluff celebrity interviews, I don’t know when she’d have the chance to really make references to her “Blackness” although I faintly recall her referencing her African roots when she discussed her personal hair care. The only thing I know about her that makes me question her self-identity is the title of her book: “Hoda: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer, and Kathie Lee.” The fact that she refers to her hair as “bad hair” may or may not shed some light on how she interprets her ethnicity. But since I haven’t read the book, I’ll withhold a lot of my comments on that subject.

Who knows if she is embracing the “ambiguity” zone she’s occupying, alongside celebs like Rashida Jones and Maya Rudolph, and playing it to her advantage? Who knows if she simply doesn’t think about her ethnicity? Although I’m a strong proponent of Black celebrities leveraging their star power to advance Black causes, I can understand when certain celebs choose to keep a low profile on issues of race and rather lead by example.

What do you think? Does Hoda need to be more outspoken when it comes to her identity and speaking out on Black issues? Sound off in the comments section.

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Sorry, that was rude. It’s just Ashanti’s voice is average, at best, and she’s been having a tough time making another comeback on the music scene so it was time for her to secure some new streams of revenue, and thankfully she has.

Yesterday, the singer made an appearance on the “Today” show and announced her new gig as executive producer and co-host of a new program known as “Fuse News,” along with Elaine Moran and Alexa Chung in New York and Jack Osbourne based in Los Angeles. Ashanti says the show is sort of like MTV’s “TRL.”

“It’s basically a music news show that’s kinda filling the void,” she told Kathie Lee and Hoda Kotb. “This is something I think we’re going to pioneer and inject something back into music. This is something we’re going to pioneer and inject something back into music. We’ll be talking about album sales, iTunes, and maybe we’ll get a little bit into the relationships of who’s dating who. We’ll be watching new videos, new artists, performances, it’s going to be really cool.”

The show is expected to launch this fall and Ashanti says she’s very grateful for the opportunity to have her hands in something new. She’s also not done with her own music, adding that she’s still hard at work on her album “Braveheart.” Oh, and of course when she was asked about her own relationship status side-stepped that question like she was doing the cupid shuffle. Nelly Nell’s still got that on lock.

Aretha Franklin wants one of these open judge positions on “American Idol” more than I thought. The singer who’s known to be quite the diva has been anything but secretive about her desire to be a judge on any singing show on TV right now, and from an email sent to CNN, she will stop at nothing to get it, including snapping on people who try to shoot down her chances.

Yesterday, “Today” hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda were discussing Aretha’s hopes of landing a spot on “Idol” now that all four are practically open, and they seemed a bit doubtful about how fit the Queen of Soul would be for the part. At one point Kathie said:

“If they are looking for a younger demographic, there are a lot of kids out there (who) actually don’t know who Aretha Franklin is. It’s sad, but they don’t.”

E! correspondent Jason Kennedy also added his doubtful two cents:

“She doesn’t like to fly and that will make it hard for her to travel across the country for auditions.”

Without hesitation, Aretha sent an email to CNN that proved she clearly did not appreciate the hosts trying to lessen her chances of joining “American Idol.” She wrote:

While I enjoy Kathie Lee and Hoda daily, her assessment is totally wrong! I’ve been to California from Detroit four times this year and Florida. I go wherever I choose to go comfortably on my custom bus.

My audience and fans span the age of eight to 90! And are multi-ethnic, and I am very well known to young adults, tweens and teens. Their parents play my music and I take care of my business whenever I sign on the dotted line. I’m surprised Kathie Lee did not research my worldwide celebrity audience! She’s usually right on top of things with a great sense of humor, but she’s totally wrong this time. She should research me before she speaks about me. I’m sure she thought she was right; still enjoy Hoda and Kathie Lee!

Oh and one more thing:

“I could enjoy being a judge for a season or two. Let’s kick it up a few notches and have a slammin’, jammin’ season,” she added.

Someone please give this woman a chance so she can stop driving herself crazy trying to get on! I guarantee Aretha normally wouldn’t have responded to such trivial comments were she not so thirsty to get on one of these shows. Clearly she is not playing with anybody who could ruin her chances.

Aretha might have ruined her own though with that one or two seasons comment. Who tells a potential new employer they’ll only be around for a limited time? That type of thinking has “American Idol” in the mess it’s in now. The creator behind the Fox hit show likely doesn’t really care about Kathie’s comments anyway—and potentially not Aretha’s either—but for Hoda’s sake, it’s probably a good thing she didn’t comment.

The statistics can be overwhelming: Every 13 minutes, a woman dies from breast cancer. It is the leading cause of death for women between the ages of 15 and 54. But millions of women will battle the scary diagnosis and win, including famous faces from around the globe.

From comedians to actresses and TV personalities, learn which of your favorite celebs, and fearless women, defeated breast cancer…